Memory Alpha Star Trek Club
| Fan Club | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Memory Alpha Star Trek Club |
| Dates: | active in 1976 |
| Founder(s): | Roberta Rogow |
| Leadership: | Roberta Rogow |
| Country based in: | Paterson, New Jersey, US |
| Focus: | Star Trek |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Memory Alpha Star Trek Club was advertised in the 5th International Star Trek Convention program book.
It was founded by Roberta Rogow who was also very well-known for her creation of Trexindex, an index of early Star Trek fanzines. The zines she collected for this fanwork were sent to the Paterson Fanzine Library where this fan club was based.
Comments by Rogow: 2017
It was called Memory Alpha and when I went to Ridgefield I called it Memory Beta, and it was very popular, and there were a number of young people involved in it.
[...]
I had speakers come, and at one point I had Marion Zimmer Bradley, who was visiting friends in New Jersey, and she came and spoke at one of my Star Trek meetings in Ridgefield because at that time, I was very involved in Darkover fandom also.
[...]
[Bradley] was there to talk about her own books, of course, Darkover. And about writing in general, because by that time focusing on Star Trek for Star Trek, but on writing and on literacy and science fiction writing. And that's what allowed me to do it at libraries, because I didn't say, this is a Star Trek club. I said, this is a club for people who are interested in writing and reading. This is about literacy not spaceships.
[...]
[The meetings were] part writing workshop.... Sometimes it was talk about one of the episodes, talk about what was going on. Sometimes somebody would read something.
[...]
It was like a monthly thing. I tried to get a speaker, usually somebody who could talk about writing or somebody who was involved in science. I tried. I know I tried to get artists, fan people. In other words, I tried to use Star Trek as the hook to get people to come to the library.
[...]
We had about eight or nine kids, which, I mean, it wasn't super popular. Soccer, it wasn't. But these were the kids who had no place else to go. They were the nerds. And in Paterson in 1970, whatever, nerds were not popular kids. Especially not nerds of color. Nerds with funny names. So I was doing what I thought was right for the community, and of course, I was having fun doing it, too.
[...]
What I wanted to do at the time was get kids into the library to read. And if Star Trek got them into the library to read, then let's do Star Trek. [1]